


Fire and Flames

by LeoOtherLands



Series: Sympathy for the Dead [5]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Body Worship, Feelings Realization, Fucking, How fucking long does it take to get someone's pants off Ibiki?!, I can't write "quick porn...", Ko is bad at feelings..., Loss of Virginity, M/M, Medical Nin, Original Character-centric, POV Original Character, Porn With Plot, Scar Worship, Self-Indulgent, Singing, Slow Burn, The Author Regrets Nothing, This was supposed to be "quick porn.", kinda sorta, long..., visits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:34:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28209156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeoOtherLands/pseuds/LeoOtherLands
Summary: Ko never imagined what it would be like to have Ibiki Morino in his house, with his children. He never imagined he would start questioning just what it was the scarred torture made him feel, either.
Relationships: Morino Ibiki/Original Non-Binary Character(s)
Series: Sympathy for the Dead [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1696153
Comments: 10
Kudos: 6





	Fire and Flames

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tridraconeus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tridraconeus/gifts), [Ao3_Vi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ao3_Vi/gifts), [Zazibine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zazibine/gifts).



> This work... is above all, a gift to myself because, as I told a friend when I was writing this, "Doing something nice for Ko feels like doing something kind for myself." But... I am a strange one and I like to give gifts and, in particular, I like to give gifts that mean something to me. So, I decided this afternoon, when the need to finish this struck me, that I would try to give it to as many people as I could.
> 
> And so, Tridraconeus, I'm passing this to you, man, because, let's face it, I've gifted you most of the works in this series already. And you have always supported my "Ko fucking Ibiki" endeavors. Thanks, man. For everything. Hope you enjoy this massive thing somehow, when you get around to reading it over.
> 
> My dearest Ao3_Vi, dearest kohai. I am giving this one to you, too. I really did want to have something for your birthday, but failed miserably. And it really is hard to tell you just how much having you in my life means to me. You are one of the best friends I have ever found in this life and possibly one of the sweetest people I have ever encountered. Even on my worst days and in my most uncommunicative moods, I adore you. You even gave me the words to Ko's song... I can't count the number of times I've listened to that song... Just... thank you for being here with me.
> 
> Also... errr... I tend to like gifting things to people I don't know and making them wonder what the fuck. So... Zazibine, I am tossing this your way because I really do read my bookmark comments and yours on the Sympathy for the Dead series is one I am most proud of. I don't know if this counts as much happier than the rest of the main story, but... Ko is happier. I think he is much happier and on his way to being well.
> 
> This one is also for That One Co-worker I Consent To Speak To. You know who you are. If you hadn't one day asked me which of my stories I would recommend people read, hadn't made me think, I never would have started writing this. So, take it, despite the fact I know you'll never read it beyond a certain point. I honestly half want to try writing something you will read all the way through... But gods only know what.
> 
> I hope you all find something in here you like. Don't mind this fool of a writer. It could have been a better day.

Watching Ibiki among children was the best of it, and it was strange that it should be this way. Much of what I’d known of the man was in a professional sense, and there had been little room for softness between us, even outside the interrogation room. He had never been less than firm around me and, even now, that did not change, and yet… yet my children did not fear him. They gathered around him, like a flock of starlings, attracted perhaps, by his very firmness and presence. I was _Mother_ , I was the one who cared for them, but I was also _teacher, instructor_ , the one who showed them discipline and how to defend themselves and others. Perhaps they felt this in a kinship with Ibiki Morino, who let them grip on his hands and cling on his coat, but who also spoke low and insistent, and whose face registered little.

Really, my children were more at ease with the torturer than Rai was with my little ones. My fellow medical- _nin_ tried, but it wasn’t long before I rescued her from my flock of young and gave her a task to preform beside me in the kitchen. It was easier for my once-caretaker to bustle about among pots and kettles than small bodies. And that was just as well. Meals were always busy things when you had more than two dozen hungry ones to feed.

Haru, Ibiki, Rai… All of them rotated with me in my house, my guests, acting as I would expect of _shinobi_ and making themselves useful in some manner or another. All to the clamor and call of, “Mother, mother!” and the peal of careless laughter.

I found myself flashing little, thoughtless smiles at it all and paused on occasion, to correct one of my children’s forms. To adjust their stance or the angle of their arm or movement of their feet, as they flowed from one _kata_ to the next. A matter of play for my young ones, and yet, not play at all. A few of the older ones, the more confident or foolish ones, challenged me with hard faces and I beat them back with a few moves, my own face impassive.

They wanted to learn. All of them. But the older ones saw through the playfulness and game I delivered to their younger siblings. To them, it was more than the nightly dance and the morning enlivenment. To them it was the same ritual my father and older brother had taught to me as I’d learned to take my first steps.

Haru understood it. Haru… my child, so like me.

Of all the people who had come to see to my welfare out on the edge of the Land of Fire, I thought it was her I was most pleased to see. Thought it… and yet, it was strange to me that I continued to catch Ibiki’s eyes on me. Watching me. Gauging all the little things I did, from minding the madness of my house, to absorbing the blow of a skilled student, sliding in under their guard, and knocking them back with a detached speed. Even sitting at the long mats, where we spread the food and my children gathered in straight lines and I stroked my fingers through their hair with calm contentment, I caught Ibiki’s eyes on me.

Quiet. Considering. As if he were still trying to see through me. To see his way to what I was holding inside.

I tried to ignore it, to let it pass. Morino was a good man, in his way, and the more I saw the scarred man again, the more I knew I meant what I had told Mei when my guests arrived. Ibiki was a friend…

My fingers curling down around the edge of the _tatami_ mat, much of me understood it was not something I had ever expected to feel for the man who had once broken me in the cells of the _Konoha_ Intelligence Division. Once, I’d told him I couldn’t forgive him, but I understood what he’d done. No more than his duty, no more than what he’d had to do.

“Hey, Ko,” Rai’s voice called to me the way it so often had in the days and weeks and months following that breaking, “how you doing, Ko?”

I smiled at her, an unconscious thing. A thoughtless thing. Rai was family, and more than family, and I wanted her to know I was well.

I _was_ well.

Standing, helping to clear the food away, laughing peals of unrestrained mirth, I knew I was well. I only felt something strange around the other man, and I did not know what.

What was it Ibiki made me feel?

I wondered it as Haru and I went out to spar and my other children gathered around to watch on their knees. I considered it when Rai, as per her usual, fell to murmuring intelligible things and dozing with her mouth open on Ibiki’s shoulder, as if the other _Konoha-nin_ were an unimposing figure and not the most famed torturer in all the Land of Fire. Pondered it when Morino scooped up my protesting fellow medic and deposited her in the room she and Haru were to share.

But I found no answers. All I held were questions when Haru got up to sleep and Ibiki came back to sit by my central fire, to talk with me and watch my children train and drift away to sleep by ones and twos, the boisterous noise of my house dimming down to quiet trickles of speech and the thud of arm on arm and leg on torso.

When I’d built my house, I’d left the main room wide and long and the fire pit open to the sky above. The ideal place to train young ones on the _tatami_ mats and watch the stars come out above the crackle of the fire and flames.

Ibiki seemed to agree and share in my notion of peace. Time went on and he lingered. Watching me, still. Eyes flickering in the reflected light. “How have you been, Ko?” he asked, at last. A real question. An intent question. An inquiry not to be answered with hurried, common curtesy or common response.

I looked at him, smiled at him, as unthinking as I had allowed my lips to form that sign of ease all through the evening. “I’ve been well, Morino- _san_.” A _true_ answer, a real answer. I had been well. Had been happy. And perhaps my once guardian could see it in me

“You’ve built an interesting place, Ko.”

“It’s home,” I responded, even as Mei let herself fall side-long into my lap, curling into a small ball of clinging child and distracting me from the man seeking my attention.

“I’m tired, mother,” she murmured, eyes drooping.

My fingers stroked her hair and brushed it back from her face. “You should have been asleep hours ago, Mei.” Should have been and would have been if it had been any other night. Any other day but this one, when so many of those who cared for me had come to this place I had made mine.

“Don’t want to sleep,” was the reply, before her breath evened out and her muscles uncoiled, leaving me with a sleeping child and a light, unnoticed smile on my lips, yet again.

Softly, I let my fingers continue to trail over her hair and let that smile linger on my lips, unthinking, unknown. Ibiki’s presence forgotten and the strange glow he inspired in me suffused into this moment alone. Here was my daughter. Here was one who was asleep and safe and secure and who knew there was nothing wrong in this moment. One who felt no fear and knew all was well.

Because all was well…

It was a hazy thought. Warm and muted and toned down to a drowsy notion of a room seen through half-intoxicated eyes. All the colors blended and all the light golden and cast in halos around their sources. This was the feel of it and this was my life and this was how it was meant to be.

“You’re an intriguing person, Ko.” The words were low and light and barely there, but they drew my eyes back up to the man across from me. The man whose presence I’d misplaced and yet who I could not help but sense, all the while. He was watching me, again. The only sign of the thoughts behind his stoic face the flicker in his dark eyes. All else was just the shift of firelight and shadow over the ridges of his nose and chin and in the hollows of his eyes.

Something turned over in my stomach at that intent focus directed on me and my heart fluttered and stuttered in my chest. The words he had spoken to me so close to the way he’d addressed me in the _Konohagakure Jōhōbu_ I felt tears I knew I would not shed prick at the back of my eyes, hot and painfully bright, and I had to wonder, a shiver of something unfamiliar working through me, was I still afraid of this man? After all the time and space between our first meeting in the interrogation room and now, was I still the one chained to a table and terrified of his touch?

“I’m just myself, Morino- _san_ ,” I murmured, wanting to drop my eyes back to the body over my knees. Anything to escape that piecing glance, which still saw right through me. Saw to the core of me.

“Just Ko,” he finished, voice rumble.

“Yes, Morino- _san_ ,” I said, shifting Mei into my arms and standing with the small one cradled against my chest. Then, “I will put her to bed, Morino- _san_.”

The _tatami_ mats were cool under my feet and the dim spaces of my house so well known to me there was no need of light for me to accomplish my task. Easily, confidently, I slipped my child into her sleeping clothes and tucked her beneath her blankets between two of her siblings, the sensations Ibiki woke in me slowly slipping away under a different sense. A more pressing and immediate one, honed before I had ever met the man.

When I returned to the central hall, the fire had burned down to red embers and Ibiki was still there. Waiting. Waiting for me?

Did I still fear this man?

I asked it of myself as I paused above him. It did not feel like fear seeing his eyes turn up to me, backlit by dying fire. But what it was that set my heart pounding in my chest when he said my name I didn’t know.

“Ko.”

“I’m going out, Morino- _san_.”

“Out?” he questioned, curiosity tightening his features almost an imperceptible trace.

“I have visitors coming, Morino- _san_.”

“Visitors?” He asked it but then his eyes flickered and something twitched under his scar. Perhaps he’d seen something in the set of me, in how I stood so still and thoughtful and absently determined. “I’ll come with you,” he said, standing.

I looked up at him and nodded. It would have been useless for me to say it was unnecessary for him to come, so I just didn’t. Ibiki was one of the heads of the _Konoha_ Intelligence Division and need not listen to me.

He let me set the pace, though, let me lead, and kept at my shoulder, something I acknowledged as an attempt not to place himself behind me and give me the impression of being stalked. He was trying for my comfort and I wondered at that, given I was leading him out in the woods to deal with some unwanteds.

But I said nothing and only walked at a moderate pace, until we hit a tree-rimmed glade, coolly lit by moonlight. I’d been able to count the _chakras_ advancing on my home for some time and I knew they were gathered, bunched just in the shade of the underbrush, deciding how to proceed with their prey out in the open instead of in the barrier of walls.

“You shouldn’t have come,” I said low, seeming to the air, and Ibiki cocked his head. Maybe thinking I was talking to him, maybe sensing the _chakra_ signatures around us. I did not know the man’s formidability as a _chakra_ sensor.

It didn’t matter much, though. Figures melted out of the trees like smaller shadows, detaching themselves from a whole, and I knew the torturer was counting them as they came on.

Two dozen out in the glade with us, another half dozen still in the trees, trying to flank us. We two _nin_ , all by ourselves.

An unfair fight.

“ _You_ shouldn’t have come, medic. The borders have been ours since long before you were born.”

The words came from the man out front. A tall, dark-haired missing- _nin_ , half the girth of Ibiki. He, at least, I’d seen before. A small, burnt patch on the side of his face spoke to that. I had not bothered to learn his name, but he’d brought a group of three to a village to harry the civilians there on the same day Mei and I went to trade for supplies.

My face registered nothing, turning it up to the taller man. “It isn’t wise, your coming to attack my home and my children. I won’t be gentle this time.”

His face said the words registered as insult, and he waved a hand at several of his _nin_. I glanced up at Ibiki at the same time, feeling my _chakra_ burning along my skin. “I will take care of this, Morino- _san_.”

At the same time I said the words, I sidestepped and let go of the barriers I kept on my _chakra_. Not fully, but enough. A light wind whipped my hair and the loose folds of my uniform and, following the whip of energy, fire trailed down my arms and over my chest and around my legs. It sparked and flowed in the currents moving my hair. The heat scorched along every millimeter of exposed skin but didn’t burn. Not me. It never burned me.

I thought a curse escaped the missing- _nin_ but I didn’t pay attention. Speed had always been my friend. As much and more my friend as the fire living under my skin. A _shunshin_ performed without the need for a hand sign brought me into the group of _nin_ initially moving toward me. Though my fire didn’t burn me, it burned them. They called out and dashed away when a block or a hit ignited their clothes, and screamed when my bare arm or hand melted through their blades.

Ultimately, most of them just ran. The six in the trees never decided to break cover, and another six disappeared before I could engage. The missing- _nin_ who had brought them all here to disturb children in their beds put up the most fight and drew the only blood. And that was only due to the fact Ibiki had not allowed me to fully take care of things and I turned from one group of _nin_ to find the scarred man and the leader of my assailants engaged. Both were using _kunai_ and Ibiki had a gash leaking red down the side of his head.

At the sight of the blood, something molten burst in my core and a snarl broke out of my lips. _Shunshin_ tugged at my _chakra_ , like a thread being unraveled from the base of my sternum, and tightened my skin, then I was descending on the missing- _nin_ , spinning into a kick that sent him flying and tumbling from Ibiki like a rag doll tossed by an angry child.

The man’s _chakra_ was jittering and flickering between waking and unconsciousness when one of his band appeared at his side and pulled him away. The invading _chakras_ melted into the shadows and I shrugged off my fire, like it was an aggravating coat, as I turned on Ibiki.

“You’re bleeding, Morino- _san_.”

He nodded, sheathing his _kunai_. “It’s just a scratch.”

Anger or something like it, bloomed hot in my chest, like a remnant of my fire lodged there. “It is more than a scratch, Morino- _san_. Let me heal you.”

The man pulled a strip of fabric from a pocket and caught the blood on his face with it. “When we get back to your house, Ko.”

A flare of that hot thing and I was doing something I would not otherwise have done. Something against my calm nature and quiet reserve. I gripped Ibiki’s coat in clenched fists and, while a surprised light played in his eyes, I used _shunshin_ once more, to transport us to my house. To my private room, where I slept alone, when I wished, and kept my medical supplies.

Ibiki reeled perhaps half a step before catching himself before tipping into a thick, heavy table in the middle of the ample space.

“Let me heal you, Morino- _san_ ,” I demanded, hands letting go of him to reach up and flicker green with healing _chakra_ , infinitely cooler than the fire I held back.

“I don’t want you to heal me, Ko.”

We were so close to one another, he with his back to that table, and me facing him with my hands bracketing his face, and my _chakra_ already suturing his skin. My heart was pounding and that hot, unknown _something_ pulsed in my chest, again.

“Let me—” I began again, but he didn’t allow me to finish. One of his hands came up and gripped my wrist, circling it, forcibly but not punishingly. A grip to demand attention, but not cause pain, and I remembered just what man this was and my heart beat faster in my chest and my free hand went to grip his opposite wrist, down near his waist, before he could do anything with it. So, we were standing like that, faces close because Ibiki was leaning down toward me, restraining each other, breathing labored and uneven.

“Ko,” Ibiki admonished, tone low and unthreatening.

“Morino- _san_ ,” I said, voice strained and for one moment I was back in the cell in _Konoha_ , chained to a table and afraid of his touch.

But this wasn’t _Konoha_ and I was touching his skin as much as he was mine and I raised dizzy eyes to his, once again wondering what it was I felt around this man. Was I still afraid of a man I had demanded to heal because the sight of his blood aroused my fire and ire?

“Ko.” His repetition of my name was low. More subtle than the first word, and a darkness in his eyes said he’d made a decision. Slowly, his face lowered to mine and his lips touched mine where they were parted to breathe.

I jerked and the hand holding his constricted, squeezing reflectively, but I didn’t pull away as my mind shorted, sparking and sending jolts through me.

Suddenly, our positions were reversed and I was not the one standing with my back to the room. Or, perhaps it wasn’t very suddenly. I felt Morino turning me and did nothing to stop it and then it was my hips butting up against the table. He still held one of my hands up over my head and I still held one of his down low, and his voice was tickling my ear.

“I don’t want you to heal me, Ko.”

There was a painful moment of stillness, then Ibiki was kissing me again, and I could not deny this: Ibiki was kissing me. I did not move in response to it, but I did not push him away, either, and that was invitation enough. The man over me moved his wrist, rolled it in my grasp, asking for release from my hold, and I gave it to him with a tremble in my fingers.

Ibiki rolled his wrist again, as if working out a kink or relieving an ache from where I’d compressed his joint, then he was moving with slow care. Bringing that hand up to cup the back of my head and sink into the high collar of my medical- _nin_ uniform, all at once. I should have been afraid, I realized, should have felt my skin crawl at his touch, but my heart only thudded up in my ears and my breathing sounded ragged in the hollow space of my room.

“Ko.” Ibiki saying my name was a tender thing, like a rumble close to a purr, like the way his fingers wrapped my head and held it with delicate care, even as he tilted it up.

“Morino- _san_.” My voice was thick and it wavered in an uncertainty and my free hand found its way to his chest. Trembled there. I could have pushed him back, but I didn’t. With runaway heart, I let him control the angle of my head, let him bring his lips back on mine and run the tip of his tongue over them.

A shock went through me at that brush of tongue, and I jerked again, fingers curling in his shirt and threatening to tear it, but Ibiki made no move to press beyond that initial touch of his tongue on me, instead working his fingers upward to the tie in my hair. Mouth not leaving mine, he worked that strip of fabric restraining my short snub of a ponytail, tugged at it until it pulled free and he could run his fingers through my short, colorless tresses.

Gentle. Every move he made was gentle but forceful and I shook, basically shuddered under him. Perhaps it was the disparity of it all, of this moment with Ibiki, but I thought it was more than just the inexplicability of how we had come to this point, and I had to wonder, had to desperately consider, yet again ,what it was I felt with this man. I panted with the question, gasped with it, as Morino backed out of our kiss and eyed me with a dark, appraising gaze.

Close. So close to me I could feel his body heat all along mine. It made it hard to think. Hard to focus on the thought. Hard to keep a hold on the fact I was looking for an answer. What… was it… I felt…

“I don’t want you to heal me; do you understand, Ko?” The words were all low rumble and a tremor went through me because I did understand. Ibiki Morino did not want to be healed. Ibiki Morino wanted something else. Something I did not know how to give him. Something I wasn’t sure I _could_ give him.

“Morino- _san_ …” The name was drawn-out and full of pleading and I felt myself reel, hyper-aware of everywhere he gripped me. One hand holding mine up, over my head, the other tangled in my hair at the back of my head, forcing me to look up at him.

“If you don’t tell me to stop, I’ll take it as consent, Ko.”

_Stop…_

The word rose to my lips but didn’t cross them, as Ibiki slowly let go of my wrist. My hand fell to my side at that release, seemed to tumble bonelessly down, only to fumble and grasp at the table behind me, until it’d got a grip on the wood. Then I could only stand there like that, while Ibiki looked down at me and his hand dropped on my hip, edged up under my shirt, to find and caress a scar curling over the bone protruding above the rim of my low-riding pants. A scar I had to wonder if he knew was there before his fingers found it because Morino had seen much of my skin in his interrogation room, he knew how it had become a patchwork combination of discolorations, ridges, furrows, and dips left behind as proof of the work of a man less kind than he was.

My fingers curled tighter in the fabric of his shirt, fisting it, as my back stiffened and arched in response to the man above me drawing his hand over my stomach, letting it linger on this reminder of pain, allowing his fingers to pause over that mark of torment or that pucker of abused flesh. Tangibly tracing and admiring every curve of muscle and disjointed ridge of scar, as if each were equally pleasing. Making me squirm and wonder, as his exploring hand slid upward, to encounter my ribs, if he loved it. If Ibiki loved the feel of me, loved the reality of those scars covering me, covering the skin under his hands.

Memories…

Those marks were memories of things that’d been meant to break me apart. Things that had ended me in many ways. Yet… things that I had survived. Some part of the person that was Ko, and had once borne another name I chose to forget, still lived. I had broken, and yet still lived.

And Morino…

He was scarred just as much as I was. Was… that why? Did Ibiki, in some way, understand those scars he touched?

There’d been a moment in _Konoha_ when I’d first seen his scars and wondered what, or who, had tried to break this man. It’d been that moment I knew I didn’t hate Ibiki that we were in some ways connected by an understanding of shared pain. Had he experienced the same sense… looking at me?

What did he feel as he drew his hand over my marred flesh? Did he feel the same burning _something_ locked up in my chest, as I wondered what it was I felt?

I didn’t have time or breath or energy to waste on the thoughts, though. Ibiki didn’t give them to me, didn’t spare me. He cupped my ribcage and let his thumb drift over one of the crescent-shaped scars framing the upper portion of my chest, then swirl over a nipple.

My body jerked and attempted to pull away from the touch, reflectively, even as I tugged on the bunched fabric I held in my fist. Unknowingly, my hips bucked forward into Ibiki and my head spun, making the familiar angles and curves of my room waver, blur, and merge in my whirling vision.

“Easy, Ko,” Ibiki murmured, releasing his hold on the back of my head, to lay that hand over where I gripped his shirt. Slowly, softly, he pried my fingers away, one-by-one, and lowered my hand away. Intentionally, he placed it so I would be gripping on the wood of the table with both hands. “Breathe, Ko,” he instructed, rucking up my shirt further, as he added a second hand to the first on my ribs.

He was holding me, I realized, blinking up at him. He was framing my chest with his hands, while I held onto my table for strength and stability. “Morino- _san_.” The words were begging and breathless and accompanied by the crackling snap of wood splintering under my hands, as I threw my head back and writhed in those hands, hot on my tattered skin.

I’d never allowed touch to my person, except from those few I called _mine_. Never accepted contact from others, never wanted it. Never. Not even when I was a child and the only one I would let touch me or take my hand was my brother, Ryo. It wasn’t that I couldn’t bear it, so much as I did not enjoy it. And this sensitivity had only been exacerbated by my time in _Ishi_ , until the least idea of skin on mine made me want to scream and shrink back. Until, in this moment, after I had healed in many ways, it still exaggerated the drag of callused fingers across over-sensitive flesh and deep scar.

Every tiny movement of those roughened hands Ibiki laid on me, those hands I had once flinched from, made me twitch and jerk, but not force him away, even as I broke the table behind me in careless, unnoticed brutality.

Ibiki didn’t seem to mind it, the fact I was destroying a slab of wood thicker than my arm. Things flickered and moved in his eyes, and I could almost think he enjoyed what he saw, that such simple touches could make me come apart. Was it the torturer in him? The part that broke things? I didn’t know, couldn’t know, but whatever it was he felt, he kept moving his hands over me, under my shirt, and bent down to cover my lips with his, again. Stealing my breath and making my world dim to the points we made contact with one another. Our lips, my chest.

Something broke out of me and I made a sound against his mouth. A little, desperate thing, even as my hips bucked forward, once more, in a spasmodic jerk.

“What is it, Ko?” my tormentor’s voice was muted, toned down, as if he were far from me or speaking from behind walls, though his face was still close to mine, and his thumb brushed another nipple, as he spoke again. “Is it too much? I won’t stop, unless you tell me to, Ko.”

I took a breath that sounded ragged and torn and shook my head like a dog with a bur in its ear. _Stop._ Stop? I had almost said that word once, but held it back, and in a far corner of my blanking mind, I knew I would not say it now. I knew what Ibiki wanted, what he _expected_ and yet, if this were some form of torture, I did not want it to stop. And that frightened me, confused me like that persistent question.

What was it… I felt for this man I could so easily push away and yet who I allowed to have power over me, to control this facet of time?

“Do you want me to stop, Ko?” One of Ibiki’s hands slid down my chest to the base of my stomach, applied hard pressure with clear intent.

My hips and tailbone pressed against the rim of the table and I cried out more at the feel of Ibiki’s hand on soft flesh than any sort of pain.

“Ko.” It was spoken low, but with the same intensity I’d known from so long ago. Ibiki demanding an answer.

“No!” I half cried the word and when it was out, I was locking horrified, terrified eyes with the man above me and he was dropping his other hand to my hip, to hold me up because I’d just admitted I didn’t want him to stop, _wanted_ this, and my legs and arms and whole body had gone watery and Ibiki _had_ to hold me up. Because now he knew. He knew. Despite everything he’d said, he’d got me to admit to him I wanted him to touch me.

“Morino- _san_.” My voice was weak and Ibiki’s hold on my hip hard. “I—”

“It’ll be alright, Ko.”

Reassurance. Quiet offering of kindness, but I was not pacified. Dizzy. I was dizzy again and I didn’t know what to do.

Morino seemed to know it and have no mercy. No compassion. I had said I wanted this and Ibiki was so good at getting me to talk. Hadn’t he broken me, after all? Made me speak to him and die under his hands? Those same hands holding me up and burning my skin with a thing hotter than my fire, had been the ones that’d given me my fourth death, hadn’t they?

But it was not quite the same as Ibiki curled his fingers under the hem of my shirt and waited, eyes still looking into mine, unblinking.

I wavered half a moment, then did what he wanted, lifted my arms obediently, so he could pull my shirt over my head, like I was still the broken thing he’d stood protectively over in his interrogation room.

As soon as the fabric pulled away, the old, familiar insecurity washed over my skin like the heat of my fire, and I curled forward with a little whimper. But there was nowhere to go with Ibiki so close to me, and I only found myself pressed up to his chest, curled there, clutching at his coat and shivering, unsure what he would do.

What it was surprised me and sent a little shock through me. Ibiki brought his hands up and rubbed at my back, letting his fingers dig into the ridges between old scars. Comforting.

“You don’t like people to see those scars on your chest, do you, Ko?” The words were a rumble in his chest, a reverberation in my ear where it lay against him.

But all I could do was clench my eyes tight closed and cling on him harder. Because this was happening and though Ibiki had seen my chest before, I still was not sure if he knew what those scars were. Despite how much he was with Rai, did he understand? I didn’t think he did and it terrified me.

Ibiki was not known for his kindness, though, and when he wanted an answer he pried it from you. “Ko.” One of those large hands left my back to cup the back of my head, again. To grip it and use that hold to pull it back, so I had to look up at him with wet eyes. “You don’t like it, do you, Ko?”

“No.” One tear leaked out and Ibiki let it fall, but he also let go of my head, let me hide again, and brought his arms around my shoulders to simply hold me. He stiffened a moment when I all but melted into that hold, relaxed, went limp, then just accepted it and held me, even as he continued his line of questioning.

“Why is that, Ko? Why do you care about only those scars being seen? Is it because they’re different? They’re older, not like the rest. Surgical scars. Did Kazue make them?”

He didn’t know…

It was a spike through me and I pressed my face harder against him. He didn’t know, but maybe he guessed something.

“Ko.” It was soft, but a warning sound, and I answered him.

“Yes! Kazue made them.” I could still remember the quietness in my teacher’s face when he put me to sleep before the procedure and the tenderness in it when he woke me after. _It’s done, Ko_ , he’d said and I’d been weak but _right_ for the first time.

“You wanted him to.” This was light, an encouragement to keep talking, and I did.

“Yes.”

“Then why don’t you let me see, Ko? You aren’t ashamed of what Kazue did.”

My fingers tightened in his clothes and I squeezed my eyes closed a moment more. Then, “No.” Slowly, I let him go and pushed back from him, so I was again leaning on that rim of table, my fingers digging into it, deepening the gouges I’d already left behind.

Morino watched me, watched the pulse of my heart under the skin of my throat and the heave of my chest, as I struggled to breathe, his eyes dark and intent. Possessively he let a thumb run over one of those deep, crescent scars. His eyes and the intentional slowness of that touch on over-sensitive scar made me gasp and arch back, trying not to pull away from him, all the while. I had told him I wanted this and I knew he would not let me forget.

Yet, he left me begging before he stopped. Reduced me to limpness with nothing more than subtle caresses and more kisses, while he wound his fingers in my hair. “Please, please,” I panted, looking at him through half glazed eyes, hips uselessly twitching in a way I didn’t understand.

“Easy, Ko,” the larger man admonished again, trying to sooth me, but not all at once. His hand going down to the waistband of my pants and tugging, a clear explanation of what he wanted.

I squirmed, hands slipping off the table in an attempt to keep myself upright. A failing attempt. Hot and cold, hot and cold, the temperature shifts flared through me and my _chakra_ tingled under my skin, about to break through.

If Ibiki felt it, I didn’t know, couldn’t tell, but something flickered in his eyes. “Is this alright, Ko?”

A question, a real question, once again in despite of what he had said before, and I struggled to answer it, only I couldn’t. Could do nothing but half lay there and breathe, making Ibiki’s eyes darken.

“I need you to talk to me, Ko,” he rumbled low, warningly.

“Yes,” I gasped, then, “No,” because the first was a lie and Ibiki would knew it and I did not know what he would do if I lied. “Morino- _san_.” It was pleading again and Ibiki noted it, noted my slip into untruth and my correction.

“Why not, Ko?” he asked. “Do you want me to stop?”

I shivered, feeling my legs tremble, and shook my head in negation, even as words tumbled off my lips as they once had in Ibiki’s interrogation room with drugs in my system, as if I couldn’t hold back what it was I thought. What I felt. “You won’t like what you find, Morino- _san_.”

His face remained stoic, no trace of emotion showing through on those scarred features, even as his index finger traveled around the rim of my waistband, to the front, just below my navel. “Whatever I find, it’ll be more of Ko. Just Ko.”

Shock and uncertainty, I could feel them in my eyes and moving in my system. He didn’t know and he didn’t understand, but… he didn’t care? He didn’t care what he would find below the fabric he gripped in that single finger?

“Please… Ibiki—”

Whatever else I would have said was ended by a flicker across his gaze. “Do you want me to stop, Ko?” A demand and I could not lie or avoid it.

My heart pounded so hard it was hard to hear, hard to think, and Ibiki was so close to me, almost touching me everywhere. Did I want him to stop? What was it I felt with this man? “No.”

It wouldn’t have surprised me if Ibiki hadn’t heard me, if the exhale of a word had been too low for him to distinguish, yet somehow he knew. He knew what I’d said. He tugged on the hem of my pants again and this time in a more than questioning manner. Half choking on a breath, I angled my hips, so the fabric wouldn’t be trapped between me and the table I used as support, and Ibiki’s fingers unfastened my pants with steady, practiced care. As if he had done this many times before, and I unreasonably tired not to think of this. Of anything _before_ this.

The spark of jealousy was illogical and confusing and Ibiki’s next movements left no room for thought of it. He placed both his hands on my hips and pushed my clothes down in agonizing slowness. A slowness that made me squirm and pant for breath as much because I was went between my legs and the fabric clung as it was peeled away, as because Ibiki was seeing me, was seeing all of me I had tried to hide so long. Yet, when it was done, I still stepped out of the tangled cotton of my medics uniform, and swayed back against the table, lightheaded and reeling, again. Because now it _was_ done. I truly was completely bare in front of Ibiki Morino, and I didn’t know what would happen next.

Ibiki’s eyes flickered, as he looked at me, taking in this last facet of what was me, but nothing in his face changed and I felt the unexpected heat of tears in my eyes because I didn’t know what he was thinking any more than what would happen now and it was terrifying. Shuddering, I closed my eyes, turned my head away, and squeezed the table hard enough its snapping under my hands, the spreading crackle of fissures streaking across its surface from the deepening gouges I had already dug into it, was the only sound in the room beyond my heart beat and ragged inhales.

“Ko.” I jerked at my name, spoken low, prompting, but also commanding. “Look at me, Ko.”

A little muffled sobbing sound came out of me, but I did what he asked, something in me wondering what he would do if I didn’t. If I resisted his gentle nudges to obey. Nothing terrible. Nothing painful or unwanted, I was sure in some deep part of me, yet… still I did not want to know. Did not want Ibiki to end this and leave me here alone. Despite it, this unadmitted truth, it was hard to look up at the man above me, difficult to watch as his eyes took in my helplessly pained expression and wet eyes. Even the beat of my heart throbbing in my neck felt imperative under his watch. Morino seemed to know it, to understand the bare anxiety I turned on him, his next words soft when they came.

“It’ll be alright, Ko.” A reassurance, even as his hand settled on my thigh, warm and anything but reassuring as he thumbed over scars inlayed in my skin. Because there were more scars here, too. Wide, horizontal stripes running down my legs in haphazard arrays that banded my limbs in the same fashion as the patterns on a _Bakeniko’s_ pelt. Ibiki massaged over them, his movements slow, nudging my legs apart without my noticing, even while my breathing hitched shallowly and more flashes of inexplicable heat trailed through me and under my skin, leaving me weak, as if I were expanding _chakra_ rather than half laying under Ibiki’s gently demanding ministrations.

But I could not think of this clearly, either. The tight control I kept on myself was slipping further and further away and all I could focus on was Ibiki. Ibiki… did not… care? He did not care what he was seeing, touching, didn’t align with the image of me I knew, or had thought I knew, he had held of me since our time in _Konoha_? What I felt in regards to things scattered about my mind like leaves in an autumn wind and I could not catch single thoughts or emotions with Ibiki playing with my scars, letting his fingers climb them like a ladder leading upwards. All I could manage was a recognition, a simple thing. There was no trace of distaste or surprise in Ibiki’s features. Only interest and flashes of something that made my heart stutter and my skin burn. Burn so hot I thought I was feverish.

I could not even keep my hands from slipping out from under me and my body from tipping backward over the table, until all I could see was the darkened ceiling panels cloaked in night-shadows swimming before my eyes. “Mor… i- ino- _s- san_ …” The broken name tumbled haltingly out, followed by something like a high keen, near pain. Ibiki’s hand had been on my thigh, moving higher, but on my leg. Then it wasn’t. His fingers slid into my wetness and moved up, until they found and stroked torturously at a group of nerves that made my body, so close to the point of _too much_ , spasm and my head fall back further, while I articulated that pure sound of pleading.

When it was done and I hung there panting and shaking sporadically, somewhere in the distance beyond me, seeming far away and removed from the reality of me and what was happening in my spinning head, Ibiki huffed a breath, a noise like surprise I instantly felt had no place in the man or this moment. Just as the dawning understanding he had gone stiff, froze still in the very act of touching me had no right here.

“Morino… _san_.” I managed, somehow summoning the energy to raise myself on trembling arms and dizzily look down the length of my body at him. My head felt it was floating, my eyesight wavering as if I were drunk, my heart beating out of sync, yet that one glance I found myself capable of was enough to show me the cause of Ibiki’s inexplicable inaction, neither removing his hand from me nor continuing to stroke me into oblivion.

I first understood it in the light of the room. It was different, had altered from the steady, unchanging moon glow, which had permeated my home. Now it flickered golden and honeyed, played in sweeps over Ibiki’s tense-thoughtful face. The reflection of it traced up his scars and flared in the depths of his dark eyes. This new, shifting illumination set shadows that had lain still to dance in the corners of the room I knew so well and painted them in changing swaths of color across the ceiling, even while it wrapped us in an orange-yellow halo. A hue of fire.

 _My_ fire.

Had I thought the control I kept on myself was slipping? Sliding out of my fingers, even as I struggled to grasp at the threads? Yes, yes I had thought that, and with that loss of hold on my barriers, the fire I kept hot and living beneath my skin was now breaking out alone my flesh. Budding and blooming there like blooms of glowing flames.

Fire and flames moved over my torso and wreathed down my spread legs, living things I could not control or contain any longer. I pressed my hands to the table, trying to lift myself up, and steam hissed to life as the heat of my skin met varnished wood, leaving darkened fingerprints in their wake, smudges over grain patterns. The same was happening to Ibiki’s coat. Steam and fire trailed up his arm from the place he had his fingers in me, and yet he didn’t flinch, didn’t shift away or make any move to extinguish the blaze spreading up toward his chest. Only watched my body respond to him this way, took in how my hips were traitorously and automatically twitching toward him, wanting to find more traction on the hand he was no longer using to incite me.

“Sorry. I’m sorry,” I gasped. Internally, I knew I was not burning him, that my fire would not sear anything I did not label _threat_ , and Ibiki… was not… a threat. He should have been, he was picking me apart, prying me open, so he could examine pieces of me I was unwilling, or incapable of, admitting to. Yet, he was not doing this unkindly, not without gentleness. And I couldn’t get away from the guilt of this. That my fire should be out of my grasp and that perhaps Ibiki would think it was purposeful I should have let it out against him.

“I’m sorry. So sorry, Morino- _san_ ,” I repeated, close to weeping and unable to stop either that or the flames that continued to crawl over me and the man pressed so close to me.

“It’s alright, Ko.” The words were a mummer and then Ibiki was sliding his arm around my shoulders and drawing me close to him, pressing me to his chest, while his fingers explored what they could do to me a little more and my flames burst around the scarred man. Hugged him the way my arms came around him and would not let go.

Would not. Could not in some desperate way. The same way I needed Ibiki between my thighs and his hand to keep on its work where I was slick and a blooming warmth was spreading like a fire I could not control, had never _been_ under my control. A sensation riding my hips and gripping the base of my stomach.

I wanted— Wanted! Wanted what I did not know and did not care to know, so long as Ibiki did not stop. Bright white seeped across my vision and I lost awareness of everything but the burn down in me and the coarse feel of Ibiki’s shirt in my fingers. I hardly knew the scarred man’s movements were slowing and he was saying indecipherable things, until he started calling my name.

“Ko. Are you with me, Ko?”

“Mor… ino- _san_.” It was an instant response, a reflective one, and with it came the understanding of how hard I was clinging on to him. Breath falling ragged out of my mouth, chest rising and falling too quickly with my efforts to gather air, I let my arms fall away and my body go slack against the table. My legs were trembling and wet had smeared down my thighs. There was a part of me that had it within itself to feel embarrassment at the fact, at the notion I’d become so undone and Ibiki was still dressed. Hardly seemed affected by what he was doing to me.

Dizzily, I attempted to raise my head, to look up and meet the eyes of the man who was slowly withdrawing his hand from me. Before I could fully do so, Ibiki’s hand slid around the back of my head and tipped it back so our mouths could meet again. He held me gentle, fingers in my hair and my nape cradled in his palm, and I melted into his touch for a second time. Any shame I might have felt ebbing out of me under Ibiki’s careful consideration.

“Easy, Ko,” the man admonished, tone light, near soothing, when he pulled back. Yet, his eyes were not calming, not easing. They flickered, dark and intent, and, as if enjoying the sight of my lips slightly parted from our kiss and the way I drew shallow breaths through them, the scarred man ran a thumb over the soft flesh of my lips and dipped it into my mouth a moment.

“Morino- _san_ ,” I said, a small part of my mind clicking slowly over feelings I was unsure of as I realized I was tasting myself on his finger. “Morino- _san_ , please.” His hand was still in my hair, still holding my neck at a soft, upward angle that ensured I had to look up at him and I felt I could fall apart with all of it. My fire, still running over us, a molten torrent that singed the table top and raised little wisps of steam, yet didn’t burn us, the loss of sensation when I had been so close to an edge I didn’t completely understand, the fact Ibiki’s lips on mine could so loosen my muscles and leave me watery beneath him. So much… so much assaulting me all at once and I couldn’t find a grasp on myself. Only Ibiki’s steady eyes on me and the familiarity of his presence seemed to hold me together, and that… how could that be?

What was it… I felt… for this man?

“Do you want me to stop, Ko?” The question was a rumble, something low down in Ibiki’s throat, and I shook my head at it, unable to gather words to reply. Morino’s hold on me was light and allowed my head to role in his hand. He took me in a moment, and I thought he would force an answer from me, but he did not. Instead saying, “Alright, Ko.”

I expected he would go back to touching me then, anticipated it, but Ibiki did the opposite. He let me go, let me rest against the table, unassisted, and straightened upright. Grunting something intelligible, he rolled his shoulders, as he had his wrist after I’d released him from my grip at the beginning of our encounter. As if he were working out a kink or releveling an ache there. Only after he had cared for himself, or perhaps assessed himself, did he put his hands on my hips again.

“I’m going to help you unto the table, Ko.”

His statement made no sense to my addled, disordered mind, but I allowed him to do it. To ease me onto the cracked surface and nudge my legs open. I wanted to whimper something half afraid but one of Ibiki’s hands was splayed on my lower stomach, warm and firm. Steady. Trying to hold me still, even as it held me together.

And I had to wonder, sitting back, propped up on my elbows and feeling the beat of my heart pounding heavily below my skin, if he knew. If Ibiki Morino understood the only thing keeping me there, open and vulnerable, was him. I had never allowed anyone else near me like this and did not even fully grasp what it was which induced me into this position with the man touching me.

“Do you have any salves or ointments, Ko?”

Why this should matter, I did not know. Wasn’t I wet enough for what Ibiki intended? The thought made me shiver with anticipation and a fear I wished I could be rid of, but I still pointed an unsteady finger toward the shelf along a wall, where I kept my medical ointments.

If Ibiki had stopped touching me, I may have curled in on myself in an attempt to hide, but he let that hand linger on my stomach, while he selected a jar, brought it to the table, removed its lid one-handed, and coated his fingers with the sweet-scented liquid. “Lay back, Ko,” he instructed, the hand on me easing me back unto the table and easing me in other ways, as well. Ibiki’s palm was spread above a wide patch of discolored skin, the remains of an old acid burn, and he caressed it, rubbing small circles over my sternum.

Perhaps this was best. My fingers dug at the wood below me and my chest rose and fell too fast. “Ibiki,” the name slid off my lips and we both paused at this, what I realized was the second time I had used his personal name and not his family name to address him. Maybe to plead for something I didn’t quite know how to define.

“It’ll be alright, Ko,” he murmured after a short time where his hand did not stop smoothing over that old memory of pain etched on my skin, and I came to understand my fire had sunk back into my skin. It no longer flickered on the paneled ceiling above me or set shadows fluctuating across its surface. The further I came down from the high Ibiki had raised me to, the more I regained a semi-control on myself and my _chakra_ slipped back behind my normal barriers, unnoticed. A thing so reflective and natural I did not even understand it was occurring until I saw the proof of it in the dimming of the room.

It… would… be… alright? The reassurance of it paled under the simplicity of Ibiki’s hand hot on my skin, and I did all I could to allow myself to fall into that sensation, to feel Ibiki’s calloused fingers on me and nothing else. One breath and the next and the beat of my heart in my chest and Ibiki’s palm over my marred flesh.

Tried. But the rush of my breath startled me as Ibiki’s fingers made their way into my wet, and my body jerked of its own accord, fingers gripping wood, tearing it, as his glided down, passed where I thought he intended to go, to swirl and press over another place. Lower. Not more personal, so much as unexpected and anxious. My heart, already so loud in my ears, throbbed at the understanding this was what Ibiki wanted, when he intended to use.

Yet, I made no sound, and no protest, and only lay still, my fingers flexing spasmodically, curling into the wood while my once interrogator circled my rim with his slicked fingers. A moment of this gentleness, enough to give me time to decide if I didn’t want it, and he pressed in, letting a fingertip push into me. Just that, the pad of a finger held still in me, as his hand lay over my stomach. Then slow movement inward and out, opening me, stretching me out, until one finger followed another, making my back arch up, pressing my lower abdomen hard into Ibiki’s hand. His palm held me firm and guided me back down, as his voice found my ears through the ringing there.

“Does it hurt, Ko?”

I wanted to speak, to offer an answer to his query, but I found I could not. My throat was too tight and my head too light. All I could give was a roll of my head on the table in negation, though that made my world spin.

Did it hurt? No, and I was confused. There were three of Ibiki’s fingers in me now and a slight sting with the stretch of muscles, but Morino’s hands were slick and the slide was smooth. What I felt was full in a strange way, devoid of either pleasure or discomfort. It felt like nothing and why should that be? Didn’t people engage in this intercourse because it felt good?

The notion left me panting and unstable, imagining I had done something wrong, had not relaxed enough for this to work properly.

I did not realize the world had dimmed above me or that Ibiki’s fingers had slid away from me, one at a time, until his words broke over me again. “Breathe, Ko.”

Blinking at him, I found my gaze wavering and fuzzy and uncertain around the edges. But Ibiki’s hand was still splayed over my stomach, his thumb gliding over and catching on my navel. Calluses rasping faintly over the old burn splashed on my skin.

“Morino- _san_?” A question, but what kind I wasn’t sure, and Ibiki met it with one of his own.

“Do you want to stand or lay down, Ko?”

This made more sense and I was grateful for it. I could not process what it was I felt, but a simple question of action I could address. Swallowing, I got my trembling palms under me and leveled myself up a little. “Stand, please, Morino- _san_.”

Because it would feel better to have my feet under me, be a reassurance to have some control on myself. Ibiki had to help me, though. Had to use his hands to half lift me and settle me on my feet and turn me to face the table because I was so weak and trembling, dizzy and spinning, I could not feel myself. Not my feet on the floor or my hand pressed to the wood. Only Ibiki behind me, huge and hot and real.

“Is this alright, Ko?” Another variation on _Do you want me to stop_ and the last I would get. There was no more room for doubt or denial, only yes or no, but despite it all, despite even my own self-assertion I would not enjoy this, I did not want Ibiki to stop. Did not want him to go.

“Ko.” Ibiki’s hand gripped my hip hard, something just apart from bruising and I was glad for it. Steely, a focal point of concentration that cleared my head just enough to speak.

“Yes, Morino- _san_.”

“Ko?”

“It’s alright, Morino- _san_.”

My words were thick but very businesslike. The words of a medical- _nin_ that stayed calm in any situation but this one. A thin raiment of another part of me pulled into this one to assure Ibiki and even myself this was what I wanted.

Ibiki took them. His one hand remained on my hip, the other pressed against the center of my back, pushing me down into the table, as he closed in on me from behind. My pelvic bones butted up against the rim of the table and that was almost painful with how thin I was, but it was alright. Sensation, anchoring, real. I was laid out across the table’s surface, chest pressed to it, almost on my tip-toes, but this was also alright, something to grip, something to hold onto and some leverage.

Morino was behind me and for the first time I heard the faint rustle of his clothes coming undone. It made my heart jerk, but I stood still in that vulnerable position with my face tucked down to my chest. I didn’t see him do it, but I smelled the sweet floral scent of my ointment, and my mind conjured the image of him slicking himself. It left me dazed and then I knew it to be true when Ibiki’s hand guided another part of him to my stretched entrance.

I refused to make a sound, beyond my open gasps and pants for air, while Ibiki took his time slowly penetrating me. He was being careful and I knew it and I was grateful, but I still felt nothing but dizzy and too tight and too full and perhaps some guilt I was not doing this right. What was I even meant to do?

Ibiki’s hands on my back were some comfort, rubbing over old scars, old scourge marks long since healed but still tingling and fresh in memory. Appreciating those marks and being soft on my skin. When he must have been fully seated in me and I felt him flush with my skin, the man’s hands switched to my hips and helped me take a few steps back, so I had more contact with the floor and lee-way to maneuver. His palms slid up and down my sides and hips and legs, and his voice soothed me.

“Try moving a little, Ko.”

An instruction on what I was meant to do, but also an allowance. Ibiki letting me have some control here, where I was so unsure.

My face felt tight and my skin frozen, like it wasn’t mine, yet another fact of my body feeling unreal, but I got my palms on the table and managed to pull forward a few inches before pushing back. A slow and clumsy attempt at a thrust that still felt like very little but unusual to me. But Ibiki made a sound I had not heard from him before, a deep, grunting huff of inhaled breath that sounded like pleasure, and that was encouraging. Perhaps this was better for him than it was for me.

A few more awkward, repeated motions, I had to work through with concentration, and a few more noises from my partner told me it must be so, but that was alright as well, I reasoned. I was doing something correctly.

Ibiki’s hand coming around me and sneaking up between my legs, where I was still wet, and rubbing at that nub or nerves drove the thought from my mind. White blanketed my vision and a keening cry filled the room, even as my unsteady rhythm broke and I slammed myself backward in a wild jolt. Everything went still after that. The scarred man was no longer stroking me, he was holding me steady against him by the waist and hips and I was braced on the table on my forearms, fire once more swirling before my eyes.

“Easy, Ko,” Ibiki admonished. His words were accompanied by the hiss of steam where our skin met and the faint crackle of flames burning nothing, but dancing over fabric. I’d lost control on myself again, but it seemed alright because Ibiki took it and helped me.

He eased me forward off of him, and back up unto the table, so I was laying on my side, one leg tucked up to my stomach, the other held up in his hand as he reinserted himself in me. It was not quick, not sudden, but time seemed to drag and the world to be moving slow and I could not get an accurate grasp on time. I felt that Ibiki gave me ample time to resist or to protest, and though he arranged me as he wanted me and held me firm, I could have pulled away. Yet again though, I just lay there and waited with him inside me, making my breath come uneven in an anticipation I didn’t understand.

Or maybe did. Ibiki had made me forget myself before. Made my world white out with pleasure when I felt it wouldn’t or couldn’t. The fact he could do it again dragged through me on a fragile trial of want and I just remained there. He let his hand linger on my stomach a moment more, on that old burn, then Ibiki Morino started moving, setting a smoother and steadier pace than I could have, and he let his hand dip down to resume sliding through my wetness.

And this… this felt like _something_. I wasn’t even aware of how I must look, spread out on the table with Ibiki in me, or of the sounds I made or how long it took to make me fall apart under his relentless ministration, I only knew my whole body jerked and spasmed and my mind blanked out, as I whined inarticulate, begging things.

At some point, in some far off way I didn’t want to grasp at too thoroughly, I found I was coming back to myself. Something warm and wet was trickling between my thighs, while Ibiki stood over me, saying comforting things, I didn’t understand, and rubbing slow circles into my hip.

My throat was dry, I realized, and raw from whatever noises I had been making, and absently, I found myself glad for the wards I had wrapped this room of mine in when I’d built my house. Protective wards, sound-dampening wards, resistance wards. No one could enter my space without my permission and no one could hear or see what happened here without my leave. I had woven the fabric of those wards, and others, into the very base materials of this room, and some of them shimmered over my walls, glowed faint red, as my dazed eyes dragged from one intricate whirl to the next. Anywhere but to Ibiki’s face. I could not look there, even as I was relieved we would not have been heard. None of my other guests, or my children, would have caught a hint of what had happened between us.

What… had… happened.

“Ko.”

I swallowed at the statement of my name and attempted to blink unfocused eyes. Morino was still with me and I needed to address that. Address him.

“Morino- _san_.” It was hard to get the words out of my mouth, my throat, and harder still to make my body do as I wanted. All of me felt weighted and liquid, all at once. As if I were fighting to enact movements through water. The same sluggish-slow feeling hung on my muscles I remembered near the tail-end of my time on the borders, being dragged between battlegrounds and strongholds by _Ishi-nin_ , who abused me for slowness or pain or resistance.

Physical exhaustion was rare for me and not something I relished. It meant I was weak, unable to augment my muscles with _chakra_ , as I normally did, or to cloak myself in fire. Forcing myself to get my hands under me and to push myself into a shaky, upright position, I understood my foolishness in the fight with the missing- _nin_ and my continual loss of control on my _chakra_ after, with Ibiki, had left me little more than a small, worn thing with just enough reserves left to care for myself.

“Let me help you, Ko,” Ibiki murmured, watching me move as he never had before, not even in his interrogation room, after all he’d done to me. Slow. And as if my limbs were not enough to hold me up.

I was half on my side, a leg curled under me, and the other dangling off the table, limp and useless. One hand was braced on the splintered wood and the whole arm shook, as it held my shallowly breathing form up. My sides moved in and out with each breath, my hair hung in my face, and my other hand lay curled in my lap. Over my wet thighs. My own fluids and Ibiki’s coated them and I wasn’t sure what to do. Scars and slick and other things blurring together, as the scarred man reached to help me ease myself off the table.

“I… I can do it, Morino- _san_ ,” I said softly, and moved to prove it true. Slowly, excruciatingly, I lowered myself to the floor, using the bulk of the table to ensure I did not simply slip and fall into a heap on the ground. My legs were so unstable I still stumbled and trembled when I finally raised my head a bit and was able to take a few, tiny steps and crouch and reach for my discarded clothes. They lay in a pile of white and cast-off modesty on the _tatami_ mats.

“Ko.” The word was spoken low and soothing, but I stiffened at it, my hand freezing above the material of my clothes, and I flinched away from the touch of his fingers on my shoulder blade. Ibiki’s hand fell away at the sight of my shrinking back, but his voice went on above me. “We need to talk, Ko. I need you to talk to me.”

Tears, hot and terrified of what, I didn’t know, burned across my eyes and I gripped a handful of white cloth, even as I felt the familiar, sick tug of _chakra_ low down in my sternum, as if someone were turning my insides out, signaling _shunshin_ , and even as I had one last, swirling glimpse of Ibiki’s face, as he realized my escape.

Uncertainty and concern were not features which sat well on the scarred man’s normally placid face and I found myself sobbing, as I splashed into wrist-deep water and found myself staring at my reflection highlighted by the moon.

What… had I… done?

What—

I wrapped an arm around my eyes and wept it out, until I was dry-eyed and my head felt hot and empty. Then I splashed myself with the cool water I had forgotten I sat in and used the shallow pool I knew so well to wash the remains of our sex off of me. I was tired, oh-so-tired after all I’d done and how I had used _shunshin_ to hurl myself out into the woods around my house, despite how little _chakra_ I had left to me.

But it didn’t matter. Worn, cold, barely able to summon _chakra_ around me, I dressed and turned to the trees. A few clumsy leaps brought me to my favorite place, the limb of an old, tall, smooth-skinned elm I had come to think of as my most perfect place. A little space, like my garden, where none of my children disturbed me, if they saw me there. A place that was simply my own. A tree branch and nothing more, but… more all the same.

As I had so many other nights, I lay out on the branch and looked up at the sky. The branch was wide enough to support me and few twigs or leaves obstructed me vision of the sky. It was a space I felt weightless, floating. Just myself and the sky and the stars and… Ibiki Morino.

My eyes flickered shut and I skimmed back over everything that’d happened, everything I had let happen.

What… was it… I felt…

More tears budded in my eyes and skimmed down my face, the way I reached back and reviewed each moment, each touch and flare of want. As so often when I was alone and in pain and uncertain, songs began to drop off my lips, one by one. Murmured, half-articulated things that hurt in my heart, the way peeling back a scab made one sick. But… each word and each memory felt needful and transparent in my mind.

I wasn’t even aware I was falling asleep, until I woke in the sun, with the brightness of it hot behind my closed lids, one leg slipping off the branch beneath me, and my own tears drying tacky on my face. It was close to mid-day and my children and my guests would all be awake and alert to my absence, and yet, I didn’t go back. I stayed still on my high perch, in my most perfect place, mumbling low words and watching leaf patterns shift in the wind.

 _Kosumosu, Natsuhiboshi…_ The songs flowed out of me like water, them and others, other songs that didn’t matter. And yet… did. They did matter and none more than the one I had been singing the first moment I had met Ibiki Morino. My mind always seemed to circle back to that song over and over and over again. The words of it fell off my lips and tongue, like the rain in _Amegakure no Sato_ , where I was born.

_Let me carry your burden  
If something’s not right, I will let you know  
Like the paint that’s drying on a heart that’s broke  
Let me carry your burden_

_Get you back on a high when you’re feeling low  
When the weight’s too heavy but you won’t let go_

_Come to me my brother and I will sit with you awhile  
Pretty soon I’ll see you smile  
And you know you will  
No matter how much you are hurting right now  
You know that everything will change in time  
So let me carry your burden_

_When your mouth’s on fire but your mind is cold  
And you’re fanning flames that won’t keep you warm_

_Come to me my brother…_

_Come tomorrow you’ll be right as rain_  
It’ll quench your fire  
Wash away your stains

_Come to me my brother and I will sit with you awhile_

_Oh I just might see it in another light_

_Everything’s gonna be alright…_

Something in the lines vibrated in my skull, swelled in my chest. _Come to me my brother, oh I just might see it in another light._

Ibiki Morino had come to see that I was well, to be sure of it, and he had seen that I was well. Had seen me fight and seen me love and seen me smile, as if I’d never died. Had he… seen me in another light than that of _Konoha_ and the Intelligence Division? Had I… done the same?

Seeing Ibiki… among my children…

What… was it… I felt... for this man?

What?

_Affection._

The word whispered through me and I shut my eyes, more tears bleeding down my face.

Affection was the answer to all my mindless wondering and yet… what was I to do with it?

_Come to me my brother…_

Noon bled into the heat of the day and I sat up, stiff and still-pained from exertions I had no practice with, any more than I understood what I was meant to do now. Beyond go home. Go home and find Ibiki.

He would be there, I knew. He would have understood, even weak, I could care for myself and there was no point in looking for me because I would come back, in time. In my own time. And my children would not worry for me. They knew mother could care for themself and would only want to find them about their business when I came back.

All would be well… with my family.

And yet, I could not bring myself to go into my own house, when I found it again. Could not. And so I let my feet carry me into my garden, instead, where I knew no one would bother me, without invitation, and knelt to plant seedlings where I could watch my house.

My children were there, yes, laughing and talking and working. And my guests and Ibiki… I saw them linger in the doorway, saw them look and leave me be, at my children’s instance, saw Ibiki Morino stay and watch me. For a while, he sat on the edge of my _engawa_ , with his hands between his knees, waiting, but in time he got up and came toward me, stopped just outside the turned earth marking the beginning of my garden.

“What can I do, Ko?” he asked with his hands in his coat pockets, and I knew he meant more than the seedlings laid out at my side, but I chose not to see that.

“Come help me plant, Morino- _san_ ,” I said, holding out a dust-covered hand to him.

He did not take the hand I offered, but he did step into my space and kneel in the loose earth beside me. “Ko,” he began, but I cut him off.

“Do you know how to plant, Morino- _san_?”

He was quiet a moment, perhaps taken aback by my blatant interruption, so against my normal way of letting him speak to the end. “No, Ko, I don’t.” He said though. “I never found a reason to learn.”

I nodded and picked up a seedling I cradled in my hands. “One has to be careful, Morino- _san—_ ”

“Ko.” Low. Insistent. Warning. _Demanding._ And yet, for once, I did not give in.

“…some things are delicate, and can break—”

“Ko.”

I reached out and took his hand, transferring the seedling to his palm and dismissing both his persistent attempt to gain my attention and the way he held so impossibly still at the touch of my hands, as if there had been some mistake and Ibiki Morino were trying to decide what it was. Gently, I massaged the side of his hand with a thumb, as I said the last words. “…if you are not careful with them, Morino- _san_.”

He was quiet again, looking down at were our hands met, seeing how I lay my hand along his and didn’t pull away or flinch.

“Ko—”

“I…” I cut him short, yet again, tucking my head down to my chest, feeling those clinging tears clawing at the back of my eyes. “I never did that… what we did… before, Morino- _san_. I…”

“I know, Ko.”

I nodded at this admission he had intuited my inexperience without my having to explain it, and tugged his hand, bringing it to the soil and helping him place the seedling and pack the earth around its roots. My hands covered his in the dirt and I held them there, letting myself understand how I felt in regards to this. His skin on mine. “I shouldn’t have run away from you, Morino- _san_. I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright, Ko,” he reassured me, his own attention on where our hand met in the dirt. “Ko…”

“Yes, Morino- _san_.”

“Are you alright with what we did, Ko? Do you regret it?”

“No, Morino- _san_!” I said it fast, but it was not lie, rather the dawning understanding Ibiki Morino had somehow become one of _mine_. One of those I counted family and could touch without care.

My face heated with repressed fire and I felt it crackle along my skin before I pushed it back, reaching for something cooler. “I don’t regret what we did, Morino- _san_. I…”

“Yes, Ko?” The question was low, prompting, curious.

I took our hands from the dirt and turned one of Ibiki’s over in both of mine, tracing how the dirt had sunk into the lines on his palm. “I would like to do it again. Before you leave. Please, Morino- _san_.”

“We have time, Ko.”

The words were low and promising, and I nodded and glanced up at my house. Haru stood there with Rai and the oldest of my children still with me out on the borders, my oldest son. A soft smile found its way to my lips, and I let my eyes settle back on our hands. Somehow they were linked and resting on Ibiki’s knee. I let myself watch the sun across the backs of our hands and that was well.

Everything… was well.

**Author's Note:**

> The song used in this fic is [Burden - Foy Vance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9OYW4JBWXI&list=PLLIFJZDPAGGkZhGn-74xB69srwL4ZTPMU&index=37).
> 
> This salty ball of angst and glitter is an original fiction author and fan fiction writer, who literally lives for comments and reader interaction. Even if this is nothing but inarticulate vowel screams, lol. He exist on a flotilla of social media, separated into a wide array writery things.
> 
> If you are crazy enough to want to see what I'm writing on any given day, and maybe try tempting me into writing something specific, feel free to join me in my personal writing Discord [Midway](https://discord.gg/jsQw96p), or friend me on Discord at LeoOtherland#7066 if you would rather chat one on one.
> 
> On Facebook I can be located on my [author page](https://www.facebook.com/LeoOtherland/) for all things original fiction, or in the [AO3 Armada group](https://www.facebook.com/groups/601270063618951) for all things fan fiction.
> 
> On [Twitter](https://twitter.com/RoseOfOtherLand) or [Tumbler](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/leootherlands) I primarily run with the fan fiction crowd and I seldom post and/or tweet anything, but if you want to drop me a line, I am always up for a chat.


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